


return

by pickledragon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depression, Ficlet, Gen, John Egbert-centric, POV Second Person, Vignette, [S] Game Over, and the logical fallout thereof, not great times for our favorite egbert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickledragon/pseuds/pickledragon
Summary: With great power comes great responsibility, sure. That's what all the movies say. But the heroic jury is out right now, on how you should exercise that responsibility while stuck in limbo for 3 whole years. How you're supposed to keep up the act when there's no director to yell cut, no home to go back to.But heroes don't ask questions like that. But you're starting to think most heroes don't know what they're doing either.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	return

Your name is John Egbert, and you were someone, once. A child, a vague outline of a hero once too, and now you've returned to being the vague assemblage of parts that for the last three years you have called yourself. 

After everything happens at once, flying around a void of debris and destruction and bad end, you land on your planet, where it all began. 

You can see it on Roxy's face, standing in front of her mother-daughter's hastily dug grave, yet another funeral for a friend that's lost most of its sting, but still leaves a lingering feeling of guilt. You and Rose had met twice- the rest of your relationship spread across years and space and online chatrooms. But standing by her body again, it all feels numb. 

Roxy brushes tears from her cheeks and closes her eyes, briefly turning away. It strikes you that she's never seen anyone die like this before. 

"We can do something," you say, and she stiffens, hands clenched into fists at her sides. "We can fix this."

Deep breath, drawn in with shaky edges. Roxy turns back to your direction, looks you in the eye. And your partial lie cannot be anything but truth now, as you realize that she actually trusts what you've promised. "This isn't the end," you say, and you resolve to make it true. 

But would you even know Game Over if you looked it in the eye?

\-----

There's growing pains with godhood, like an extra puberty on top of the one you already have to wrestle with on the daily. Discrete elements of the universe bound up in your expression of self, deadly weapons at a moment's call.

Jade described it like this, one time you'd both been bored out of your minds on the Yellow Yard. Giving the driver's wheel of a speeding motor vehicle to several thirteen year olds, who, after getting in the driver's seat, promptly discovered extra lazer functionality. 

You pointed out she'd never even seen a car in real life. She punched you in the shoulder. 

With great power comes great responsibility, sure. That's what all the movies say. But the heroic jury is out right now, on how you should exercise that responsibility while stuck in limbo for 3 whole years. How you're supposed to keep up the role when there's no director to yell cut, no home to go back to. 

But heroes don't ask questions like that. But you're starting to think most heroes don't know what they're doing either.

\-----

When you first reach into the treasure, it isn't for a noble cause. You like to picture yourself as John Egbert: protagonist and hero. Savior of the Waking World, friend to salamanders, and at least a infinitesimal amount worthy of the confidence everyone has in you. But you're not. And everyone knows it.

You perpetuate this whole cycle because you want to prove yourself, because you want to do something important for the first time in three years. You're tired of being useless, a vague collection of memories, rusted parts strung together with yarn, shambling around and pretending to be someone you're not.

The monkey's paw curls inwards, and the second you make contact with the hole in reality, it's like jumping into pure electricty, the Breeze but wild, sending shocks through your body. Reality blurs around you and you can feel the very pieces of yourself rearrange themselves into a different shape.

And suddenly, you're outside your body. There's no true presence, like the movies like to describe it, no incorporeal ghost figure of yourself left floating to help guide the people you leave behind. Just a sense of all of reality at once, and a faint ringing in your ears. Your entire body is freezing, on fire, and pure wind all at once. 

You stick your hand straight into the tangled web of reality and you realize you could change everything. Make yourself better, shape the entirety of reality to something in the image of your version of better. 

But when the time comes, you don't even have the guts to do that. 

Terezi falls from the sky, a long trail of smoke tracing her fall to ground. She gives you her scarf. And you keep the promise you made.

\-----

You come back. You come back and you don't expect roses or a parade or cheers but you at least expect _normalcy_. Earth C has everything you could ever ask for, but nothing like you imagined it would be.

It has your friends, or at least, some version of them, warped, but not beyond recognition. It has your house- now with Crocker painted on the mailbox and security systems that blare anytime you go out to look at the stars. It has kingdoms and can towns: remnants of the game that are considered just nice enough to keep around. 

It has a Dad.

It's nothing like you wanted it to be, in your daydreams and plans made in the gaps between survival. You're an outlier in normal circumstances, the odd floating outlier in a group of friends. Here, in this timeline you forced your way into with brute force, you're an intruder. 

Living in this new timeline is like experiencing reality, but slightly to the left. This Jade has never theorized with you about the nature of power, never heard you cry on your birthday as you were trying to muffle it in your pillow. You doomed her to a brother-less voyage across the universe, not even Dave Sprite to keep her company. 

This Rose and Dave are different too, than the ones you saw in brief flashes in the Incipisphere. Smiles no longer brittle, laughter no longer quite full. Bringing back Vriska solved all their problems. You should be happy for them. 

You spend most of your time inside nowadays. Everyone has their own friends, their own connections, their own partners. Even Roxy seems to have shed the baggage of your doomed timeline as easy as putting on a new dress, slipping right back into the hole her doppleganger left. 

But for you? The hole that you left already sealed up. 

Your name is John Egbert. And you are no longer anyone at all.

**Author's Note:**

> brought to you by: my intense dissatisfaction with homestuck canon, lots of projection, and the physical embodiment of orange juice. thank you for reading!


End file.
